"In 1969, while on medical leave from Vietnam, I took my mother up the road to have lunch and to get reacquainted. When we got up to pay and leave the fellow in the next booth got up and blocked our path. This was not a hippie or some punk protester- this was a man in his thirties, blue-collar worker, probably married and with one or two kids of his own. He insisted on informing me that I wasn't a real soldier and I didn't know what war was because he had fought in Korea! He said anyone could get a Purple Heart now just for the asking, and that the three I now wore were bullshit. This man, supposedly the mainstay of our country, was prepared to start a fight at 2 o'clock in the afternoon in a restaurant. Who the hell was this guy? I didn't know him, had never met him, nor done anything to him. Was the whole country being brainwashed? It was then and is now beyond my power to describe the anger and hatred I felt then, and still feel today. What intelligent people we have bred that they can be led by the nose by whoever makes the most noise! As disappointing as I'm sure it must be to some, I am not some neurotic vet desecrating society every time I'm released from the psych ward of the local VA. In fact I'm married with three kids (none of them neurotic either), a $100,000 home in the suburbs, and my own company. My feelings are still strong and buried just slightly below the surface. Today I do business with a great many of these same people who symbolically, if not physically, spit on us when we came home from Vietnam. They think I'm a great guy. I don't boast about my service time, yet I don't hide it, either. I wait with patience hoping that some day these very same people will have the opportunity to burn in hell while I laugh."